


'INCOMPLETE EDUCATION. "^^ 



AN ADDRESS 



Dl'LIVEIIED AT THK 



AMUAL COMMENCEMENT' 



UNIVKRSITY OF MICHIGAN, 



JULY I, ISSO. 



^ 



iU 



RT. REV. SAMUEL S. HARRIS, D. D., LL. D., 



BISHOP OF MirHIOAN. 



b 



ANN ARBOR, MICH. : 

rUBIJSlIED BY TIIR BOABD OF KEOKNTS. 

1H80. 




.=jr 



i 



COMPLETE EDUCATION. 



AN ADDRESS 



DELIVEUED AT THE 



ANNUAL COMMENCEMENT, 



UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, 

JULY I, I880. 



RT. REV. SAMUEL S. HARRIS, D. D., LL. D., 



BISHOP OF MICHIGAN. 



ANN ARBOR, MICH. : 

PUBLISHED BY THPJ BO.VIID OF REGENTS. 

18 8 0. 



13 



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XT or' 



\lto 




NEW YORK PUBL. LIBR. 
IN EXCHANQS. 



COMPLETE EDUCATION. 



Gentlemen of the Board of Regents, 

Gentlemen of the Faculties of the University, 
Ladies and Gentlemen: 

iSSiHE avocations of a busy life have left me but little time to 
^^^ prepare for the honorable duty of this hour. Neverthe- 
less, I am sustained, even as I stand in the hush of this crowded 
temple, by the reflection that the cause which I come to plead is 
dear to us all alike; and that the feeling of interest in our great 
University, out of which I shall attempt to speak, is the same en- 
thusiasm which assembles you here. For we come to keep the 
annual festival of our commonwealth. We come as citizens of 
Michigan to testify to our pride in what most distinguishes her. 
We come to see the chosen youth of our pleasant Peninsular 
State, with their companions from near and far, crowned with 
the well-earned laurel wreath at the close of their scholastic 
course, and to send them with our blessings and prayers, to the 
more arduous competitions of the future. Surely then I can rely 
with perfect confidence upon the sympathy and the indulgence 
of my audience to-day; believing that the same impulse which 
moves me to speak will also incline you to hear. 

I feel, too, that I can claim for my subject also, the sympa- 
thetic interest and attention of the citizens of a great State and 
country; for I am to speak to you of education in its oldest and 
noblest sense; the sense in which the wise and thoughtful of 
all ages have held it to be indispensable both to the perpetuity 
and grandeur of nations. More than twenty-two centuries ago, 
the illustrious philosopher who formulated the ideal of a perfect 



state, recognized the right education of the ruler and citizen as 
the one condition of civic greatness. Indeed, a recent criticism 
has pointed out, Av^th much acuteness and force, that all the 
extant writings of Plato were conceived and written with 
this object. It is shown that they are parts of a consistent 
whole; that what we know as the Dialogues of Search, and 
the Dialogues of Exposition, are but successive steps in the 
elaboration of a magnificent philosophy of education; and that 
the ideal State described in the Republic and the Laws, was but 
the stage on which he brought his educational ideas together. 
The fame of the great Athenian, and the dignity of his specula- 
tions are enhanced by this hypothesis. It suggests that all his 
life long he was dealing not merely with the formal institutions 
of good government, but with the eternal forces which lie behind 
them. Not less than the modern poet and statesman, he knew 
that more was needed to constitute a State, than " high raised 
battlement and labored mound, thick wall and moated gate." 
He knew that the materials of which kingdoms and empires are 
constructed are " men, high-minded men ; " and the primary 
object of all his lofty thinking was to discover and register the 
forces which develope and sustain them. One of his specula- 
tions, undertaken with this object in view, shall suggest the line 
of our thought this morning. 

In one of the lesser dialogues, the Platonic Socrates is made 
to discuss with characteristic subtlety the meaning of the word 
'* l^cocppoowTi." It was first defined as quiet self-control; then as 
attention to one's proper business ; then as equipoise ; then as 
discretion; imtil, to use a common expression of Plato, the idea 
veiled itself and passed out of sight. But the same idea emerges 
again and again, in other dialogues, under a different name, and 
is variously defined as subjective rightness, or righteousness; and 
again as justice; but always as that harmony of all the elements 
of a man's nature which the right development of his nature 
gives; which makes him all that he is capable of being, and 
gives him the use of himself as his own master. This I take to 
be the Platonic idea of education; the development of all the 



faculties of intellect, sensibilities and will into a harmonious and 
consistent manhood, in which the majesty of self-control reposes, 
and which, if duly cultivated in ruler and citizen alike, would 
constitute the true glory of a state. So did the great Athenian 
reason; but he looked in vain in the world around him for the 
battlements and citadel of his ideal city. Therefore he wrote 
the vision of his brain, and relegated the fulfillment of it to the 
distant future. Not on the shores of Hellas ; not among the 
sunny isles of the ^gean, nor under the younger and better 
Dionysius in his adopted Sicily ; not in Magna Grecia, nor on 
the Campanian shore ; but we believe that in this western world 
his noble dream is more than fulfilled. We believe that a greater 
and better Republic has arisen here. We believe that it is ours 
to fulfill, if we will, that noble career to which his dream points 
and our destiny calls us, in making education — the development 
and training of men — the leading forth and organizing the facul- 
ties of the soul — in making this the culture and the nurture of our 
country's greatness. For that nation is greatest, not whose 
natural resources are richest and most abundant ; not whose 
wealth or civic or military achievements are most splendid ; but 
whose peoj)le are best filling up and realizing the capacities of 
their being ; whose men are counting for most in individual and 
national life ; whose men are best able to use themselves for all 
that they are worth, and so are true lords of the earth beneath 
and true children of the heaven above them. 

It will be seen, then, that I use the word education in 
its oldest sense to-day. Every man has within him a certain 
stock of natural endowments and susceptibilities. Education is 
the development of these; the leading forth and organizing of 
them. It is not mere scholarship; a man may be a scholar and 
yet be poorly educated. It is not mere learning; a man may be 
learned, and yet unable to use either himself or his learning. It 
is not mere knowledge, or the mass of information which a 
man possesses; it is the development of his nature in its every 
aspect, which constitutes education. And just as culture gives 
man the use of the world, so education o-ives him the use of 



— 6 — 

himself, and makes him, or helps to make him his own master. 
Hence true education always leads to self-control. The educated 
man can always command and use his faculties for all that they 
are worth. He may be a man of much or little capacity, accord- 
ingly as nature has endowed him. He may be a man of much 
or little power; but if he is truly educated he will count for all 
that he is worth. He will fulfill his destiny ; he will do his part. 
Nay, he alone can be God's faithful vicegerent, and say to his 
sovereign Lord, I am doing the work which Thou hast sent me 
to do. 

To be completely and symmetrically educated in this sense 
is the birthright of every man; and the denial or perversion of 
this inalienable rio^ht, is a terrible wrono- for which there is no 
earthly compensation. For this the season of childhood is pro- 
longed out of all proportion to the length of man's days upon 
earth. He lingers longer than any other creature in the vesti- 
bule of life in order that before the work of life begins, his 
complex nature may be developed into harmonious and consistent 
manhood. Therefore, I hold that it is wrong, unsi)eakably 
wrong, to require a child to work for his living. It is perfectly 
true that some kinds of labor are educational. It is perfectly 
true that it is good for a child to learn habits of industry and 
self-reliance; but these things are only good when subordinated 
to the purposes of education. They become evil when they are 
allowed to usurp its place. Therefore, I repeat, it is unspeak- 
ably wrong to require a child to work merely for his living. 
Tiie pitying heavens yearn over no sight so dreadful as children 
bound like galley slaves to their cruel tasks in factory or field, 
and toiling with joyless faces to win their daily bread. The 
story of wronged and oppressed and distorted childhood, neg- 
lected by worldliness or held in slavery by mammon, has yet to 
be fitly told. A few years ago England's poetess thrilled the 
heart of Christiandom with a wail of agony as she told the 
horror of it in the "Cry of the Children." Let it resound 
throughout the world, I say, till all earth's little ones are eman- 
cipated, and the sun in his course through the heavens shall no 



more look down upon the joyless face of a child that pines in 
bondage to mammon. For the birthright of childhood is educa- 
tion, and it is a sight to make the angels weep, to see it forced 
or permitted to barter its birthright for its daily bread. 

Hardly less cruel is the introduction of a false utilitarianism 
into educationyy In education, the usefulness of a study is not 
to be measured by its availability for the business purposes of 
later life ; but solely by its fitness to develop or educate the 
student's powers. Till that is completed he should never be 
required or permitted to learn a thing simply because he hopes 
to use it to make money with. The object of education is not 
to learn useful things, but to become able to learn and to use 
them; and it is a great wrong to the student to intrude the in- 
struments and the spirit of mere money-getting into his educa- 
tional life. Permit me to say that the practical denial or neglect 
of this is working unnumbered evils to this generation. In too 
many cases education is dwarfed or perverted by a prevailing- 
tone and temper of false utilitarianism. The allurements of 
mammon and worldliness are too often permitted to call our 
ingenuous youth away from the proper business of the school 
and college. Short roads and by-paths are opened up to tempt 
them to abandon the proper work of education, and to go prema- 
turely to schools of professional and technical instruction. The 
consequence is the sending forth of half-educated men, and in- 
experienced men to plead the causes, and heal the diseases, and 
lead the thinking of the generation. Let us all protest against 
this great evil; for unless it is counteracted it will lead to the 
impoverishment of the age. Let our colleges and universities 
make men first, and then make lawyers, and physicians, and 
teachers of them. Ordinarily, so far as education is concerned — 
and we are confining our attention to that now — the only path to 
thoroughly complete manhood is through thorough educational 
training. The study of Latin and Greek and the higher mathe- 
matics, of rhetoric and logic, and mental and moral philoso- 
phy; these are the useful studies while a man is being educated; 
these are the studies by which such men as Newton and Bacon, 



and Butler, and Stephenson, and Gladstone were made. I rejoice 
to know that steadfast adhesion to this principle is ruling in the 
councils of this institution more and more. I rejoice to learn 
that the number of students who take the full classical and phi- 
losophical course, is steadily increasing. 1 rejoice to believe 
that utilitarianism, so called, is being discouraged here; and I 
hope that the day is speedily coming when none but those who 
have taken their bachelor's degree, will expect to be admitted to 
the professional schools of this great University. 

I am well aware that it will be urged against this view, that 
it would tend to keep many deserving young men out of the 
learned professions altogether. But I answer, no. Let the de- 
serving young men pass through the course that will best fit them 
for the learned professions. It is an undeniable wrong to such 
to either deprive them of such a training, or to permit them to 
avoid it. But if it be further urged that there are many others 
who would so be kept out of the learned professions because 
they lacked the industry or the natural capacity for passing- 
through the arduous studies of a full collegiate course; I answer, 
let such not aspire to a professional life at all. Let them rather 
turn aside to some other of the many honorable callings for 
which they are fitted. God has not given equal capacity to all. 
Some have gifts which fit them best for faithful work ; others, 
for high thinking. One of the uses of a high standard of prelim- 
inary ])reparation for professional life, is that a righteous test of 
capacity is applied. A righteous system of survivorship is early 
established ; and so far from being a hardship, it is an evi- 
dent blessing to the man of limited capacity to be turned back 
betimes from pursuits where he could only fail, and directed to 
others not less honorable, where success and happiness await him. 
Said a distinguished American statesman, in a letter written 
when he was the president of a college, " I am not one of those 
who advise every one to undertake the work of a liberal educa- 
tion. Indeed, I believe that in two-thirds of the cases such 
advice would be unwise. The great body of the people will be 
and ought to be intelligent farmers and mechanics, and in many 



— 9 — 

respects these pass the most independent and happy lives. But 
God has endowed some of his children with desires and capa- 
bilities for a more extended field of labor and influence, and so 
every life should be shaped according to what the man hath." 
So wrote Gen. Garfield when he was president of Hiram College, 
and he said wisely. The test by which to determine how to shape 
a man's life according to what he hath, is applied in thorough 
education. So it is in Germany. There all are educated up to 
the measure of their capacity; and while the many, trained up to 
their measure, turn contentedly aside to the useful and honorable 
pursuits of labor and business, the few who are specially gifted 
pass on to the more arduous but not more honorable duties of 
professional life. 

Time would fail me to show how the thorough and uncom- 
promising application of this principle would serve to correct 
many a recognized fault and error in our prevailing systems. 
Not only would it banish the false utilitarianism of which I have 
spoken; but it would also suppress that pernicious habit of cram- 
ming, which is always evil and tends to evil. To educate does 
not mean to cram, but to lead forth — to develop; and the teacher 
who crams the mind with heterogeneous things, is as sure to ruin 
the mental digestion, and to wreck the mental health, as the 
nurse who foolishly gives the child too many kinds of food at 
once, is sure to produce bodily disease and misery. Again, the 
application of our principle would soon retire the superficial 
methods of object teaching, which fill the mind too often with a 
mass of mere details, instead of beginning with principles in 
tlie first place, and then teaching the mind for itself to elaborate 
and apply tlieni. But I cannot pursue this branch of the subject. 
The next conclusion which I wish to derive from this principle is 
that if it be tlie object of education to develop and train man's 
faculties, it ought to develop and train them all — not merely the 
intellectual but the emotional and moral as well. Any system of 
education which does less than this, is seriously defective, to say 
the least. Not a part of man, but the whole of man, should be 
cultured into consistent and harmonious manhood bv education. 



— 10 — 

For, what is man ? He is a spirit, belonging • by his origin 
and destiny to an eternal order. He is endowed with faculties 
which, when developed, enable him to perceive, to remember, 
to combine, to imagine, to think, to reason, and so to appropriate 
truth. But he is more than an intellectual being. He is a being 
of sensibilities, of affections, of emotions. He has within him a 
capacity not only for discerning and attaining, but also for loving 
and enjoying the true, the beautiful, the good. These sensibili- 
ties are at once the most precious and the most awful endow- 
ments of his nature. By the use or misuse of them, his life is 
blessed or desolated. The orderly development and organization 
of them lead to blessedness and peace. The neglect or deprava- 
tion of them conducts to unblessedness and misery. The culture 
and right development of the affections, then, constitute a most 
important part of education. Happily for most men this educa- 
tion is begun at the mother's knee. The earliest smile, the first 
caress which greet the infant eyes are a summons to the little soul 
to begin to love. And as the favored child grows up, the affections 
expand in innocence and vigor; and the home itself, with its en- 
dearments and tenderness, with its amenities and culture, with 
its books and works of art, is the school, at once, of the taste and 
of the affections. Thankful we are that most children do have 
some degree of this precious education. But there comes a time 
when the youth leaves the gentle mother's love, and all the sweet 
influences of home. He goes to the school, the college, the 
university. It is a critical and a momentous time. Old influ- 
ences and restraints are taken away; new conditions arise around 
him. Perhaps the quickening pulse of young manhood reveals 
sensibilities which never before disclosed themselves to his con- 
sciousness. Then it is that this great department of education 
should be attended to with renewed assiduity. The awaking 
sense of beauty should be taken and trained and instructed. All 
the shy susceptibilities should be tutored into harmony and 
healthfulness, by a strong yet tender hand. Then is the time to 
teach the warm young heart to go out in innocent rapture toward 
the eternally beautiful and good. Then is the time to educate 



— li- 
the strong affections into the symmetry and beauty of holiness. 
I am glad to know that in this seat of learning, these things are 
not forgotten. Would that they might have more and more 
attention. Would that all our young men might be brought 
more and more continually under the refining influences of that 
cultivated social life which alone can form and finish a gentleman. 
Would that these halls might oftener resound with the persua- 
sive* appeals of music and eloquence, and that master-pieces of the 
sculptor's and the painter's art, might charm our youth as they 
walk in these academic groves, and greet them in visions of 
beauty from these academic walls. Believe me, this would be 
one of the best natural defences against vice. Said a gentle- 
man to me, not long ago, "When I first came into the west, 
many years ago, men drank a great deal more than they do now. 
And the reason was," he said, " that they had no other source of 
enjoyment. But now," he said, " they have books, and pictures, 
and music, and all the refining influences of social life, and they 
have the taste to enjoy these things and to look for their pleasure 
in them." That was his rationale of the better manners and habits 
of this day. No doubt there is much truth in what he said. 
The man whose life is full of resources for innocent happiness 
is not half so much tempted to resort to the debasing pleasures 
of wine, or to yield to the allurements of other folly. But the 
sensibilities, in order to this, must first be educated. The emo- 
tional nature, the affections, should be developed, trained, and 
organized. For this there ought, in every university, to be a 
chair of poetry, and a chair of art. And treasures of poetry and 
art should be at hand to summon forth and exercise, not the 
taste merely, but the affections also. Ah I gentlemen, need I say 
that this department of education is everywhere too much neg- 
lected ! And as a consequence, how many there are who go 
through the world joyless and unblessed, because they have no 
sense of the beauty all around and above them. In vain the 
loveliness of lake, and field, and river. In vain the gladness of 
the morning, and the splendor of the sunset's glory. In vain 
the freshness of the meadow, the coolness of the stream. In 
LofC. 



— 12 — 

vain has Raphael painted and Spencer sung. They pass with 
dumb lips and unresponsive eye, dull, joyless and unblest, 
through all this lovely and enchanted world, because in their 
3^outh they were never taught to look with open eyes and see 
the beautiful around them. Wise, indeed, is England's venerable 
University, in these her latter days, and happy the youth who 
have lately been nurtured there, where the great and good 
Ruskin has spoken like a prophet to England's chosen youth, 
and opened their eyes and hearts to gladness in teacliing them 
to love art as the reflection, and nature as the vision of the 
eternal beauty, the everlasting love. 

But if the intellectual and emotional parts of man need to be 
educated, so also does the moral. Upon the right culture of his 
moral nature all depends. For this is the regulative and sov- 
ereign part of his complex being. If this be weak or faulty, or 
undeveloped, or distorted, all the rest will rush to utter disaster, or 
fall into utter ruin. For it is in man's moral nature that the power 
resides to choose the right or eternally good, and reject the wrong 
or eternally evil. Here is to be found that divine light which 
lighteth every man that cometh into the world. Here is the throne 
of that mysterious j^ower called conscience wliich is at once, and 
in a large degree, the guide and the arbiter of his destiny. 
But conscience or the moral sense needs instruction and develop- 
ment. In no case is it a trustworthy guide until it is developed 
and instructed. Without this there can be no genuine excellence, 
no enduring success, no true manliness. And here it is that 
most unsuccessful men break down. Lack of moral character 
is the frailty which oftenest betrays men to ruin. N"o genius, 
no industry, no attainments can compensate for this. And 
therefore, on every ground, the culture of moral character is of 
the last importance. No system of education deserves the name 
that does not educate and organize the moral faculties, instruct- 
ing and crowning conscience, cultivating a love of truth and 
truthfuhiess, implanting a liigh-souled sense of honor which can- 
not endure falsity or impurity, and exalting the sense and the 
love of riorhteousness. 



— 13 — 

But let me hasten to say, that this division of man's nature 
into intellect, sensibilities and will, is simply conventional. Man 
has one nature, and that nature is at once intellectual, emotional 
and moral; and it is impossible rightly to educate a part of this 
if the rest be neglected. Intellectual, emotional and moral cul- 
ture act and re-act on each other; so that he is the best thinker 
whose conscience is true, and whose affections are rightly bal- 
anced and organized; just as his conscience is most reliable, who 
has gained knowledge to quicken it, and whose emotions help 
instead of hindering it; and just as he ^ can best love and best 
enjoy, whose intellectual nature is active, and whose moral 
nature is true. And this brings me to the great thought with 
Avhich I began. Education is the orderly development and or- 
ganization of man's whole nature. The educated man is always 
a symmetrical man; a balanced man; a complete man. Whether 
he is brilliant or gifted depends on his natural endowments; but 
if he is educated his whole manhood is brought out and made 
available. He is endowed with the majesty of self-control. He 
has the use of himself at his best. He is his own master. 

I cannot refrain from a single word more. Man is a spiritual 
being; and true education demands and includes spiritual culture. 
I have said that man is a spirit, belonging by his origin and his 
destiny to an eternal order. And even now and here, he is a 
part of that order. Nay, "the real world in which he lives, is 
not the world we see;" and man has within him a wealth of 
spiritual sensibilities with which to apprehend and love the un- 
seen realities around and above him. No philosophy of the 
universe deserves the name that does not deal with spirit as well 
as matter, and does not recognize spiritual forces quite as real as 
those which can be weighed and measured. And no philosophy 
and no education of man deserve the name which do not recoer- 
nize and call forth these spiritual sensibilities and faculties 
through which man as a spirit is related to the spiritual order. 
Religion then, as the philosophy of the spiritual, and the culture 
of man's spiritual nature, is an indispensable part of education, 
to say nothing of its relation to the soul's eternal well-being. 



— 14 — 

Without it no man can attain to the grace of perfect manhood. 
Nay, more; that intellect has not been fitly trained and expanded; 
those affections have not yet been duly exalted and ennobled; 
that moral nature has not yet been rightly tutored in righteous- 
ness, which have not yet learned to acknowledge and believe in, 
and love and worship Almighty God. Gentlemen, I know not 
what precise terms are employed in the Statutes of the State, to 
define the religious or non-religious character of this institution, 
and I have not enquired. You and I might differ as to how far 
religion ought to be or can be formally recognized here. But of 
one thing I am perfectly sure, that it cannot be banished from 
here. Even if it were decreed that it should be excluded, it 
could n(jt be so. You cannot keep Christianity out of any great 
I'niversity. All the world's highest thinking has been Christian 
thinking. All the world's highest teaching has been Christian 
teaching. And just so long as the highest teaching and think- 
ing rule here, they will be Christian. I know that this is a 
materialistic age. I know that men are deliberately instructed 
by a pernicious kind of object-teaching, to look at things and 
not at the meaning of them; to study relations and utilities and 
not the principles and eternal truths which lie behind them. I 
know that very many men are too much engaged in investigat- 
ing second causes to reason much upon the great first cause; 
that they are too much occupied in getting control of the world, 
to Avorship the wisdom and glory of its Maker. But I also know 
that where this is so, it tends to poverty and shallowness. I 
know that such a philosophy does not and cannot prevail, either 
here or anywhere, where men are taught to be great; for you 
cannot nurture and sustain greatness anywhere, either in the in- 
dividual or the school, with anything less than the eternal truth; 
the truth which is throned beyond the light of setting suns; the 
truth of which the eternal Logos is the alone complete expression, 
and which was co-ordinated with man in the God-man, Christ 
Jesus, in order that men might know Him and aspire to Him. 
This much of religion, at least, you cannot keep out of the lec- 
ture room, so long as the lecture room is, indeed, the theatre 



for high thinking. All the great universities of the world to- 
day, are Christian and always have been, and always will be. 
So must this. Of that I have no fear. What I plead for is, the 
candid and manly recognition of this fact by Regents, and Facul- 
ties, and students, and people. If this University is to continue 
to do its work at all, in any worthy sense, it must continue to 
educate and train men; and men are not mere animals, endowed 
with intellectual and emotional faculties; they are spirits, be- 
longing now and here both to a temporal and eternal order, 
and having capacities and faculties placing them in relation with 
each. If, then, to educate men is the function of this Univer- 
sity, the orderly development of their spiritual nature can neither 
be ignored or neglected. If it ever shall be, I care not for what 
reason of supposed necessity or expediency, then, in that hour, 
the hand-writing of doom shall flash and flame upon its walls, 
and the experiment of popular education shall be ended. Can 
the State be trusted to educate her children ? That depends 
upon whether the State intends to so educate them as to make 
men of them. And in the making of a man there is the build- 
ing up, not merely of intellectual, but also of emotional, and 
moral, and religious character. 

Young gentlemen and ladies of the graduating class, I am 
glad to assume, as I am sure I may, that this ideal of education 
which I have tried to describe, is realized and fulfilled in some 
worthy degree in you. Sure I am, that if you have faithfully 
availed yourselves of your opportunities here, you are to-day in 
the possession of a complete and balanced, and symmetrical 
manhood. I assume that you have this, and that you have the 
use of it at its best. What are you going to do with this instru- 
ment of power ? What a piece of work it is ! " How noble in 
reason ! Plow infinite in faculty. In form and reasoning how 
express and admirable ? In action, how like an angel ! In 
appr'ohension, how like a god ! " This your manhood ! What 
are you going to do with it? Oh, I hope, some worthy 
thing! And if you do, you must aim for something nobler 
than vulgar success, or still more vulgar money - getti no-. 



16 



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You must live above all kinds of selfishness, and passion, 
and worldliness, devoting yourselves with true self-sacrifice 
to the service of your fellow-man, your country and your 
God. As I stand here I seem to see one of the stately 
ceremonials of the Middle Age, A vast multitude filling a ban- 
nered hall, and a train of valiant and tried youths, come from 
their long ordeal to be admitted to the high privilege and great 
responsibility of knighthood. And methinks I hear from a 
sceptered Presence, throned in the solemn silence above our 
heads, a voice gentle and gracious, bidding you to be humble in 
all things, high in courage, strong in danger, patient under 
difficulties, to tell the truth always, to take Christ for your cap- 
tain, and do your duty to all the world. Oh, may this day 
and this hour be remembered by you, indeed, as the day of 
your investiture with our better knighthood. I cannot forecast 
your future, but this I know, that there is conflict before you, 
and toil, and suffering. Nevertheless, there is rest beyond, and 
peace to be won by you, if you will. Only "keep innocency 
and do the thing that is right; for that shall bring a man peace 
at the last." 



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